Exploits of Juve

In the shadowed gaslight of Belle Époque Paris, a master of evil walks free. Fantômas is no ordinary thief: he kills without hesitation, without remorse, without anything resembling a conscience. He takes any face, wears any mask, and leaves destruction in his wake like a dark signature. When he is finished with you, you become him. The police are helpless. The city trembles. Only one man stands in his way: Inspector Juve, a detective whose relentless pursuit has made him the terror of criminals and the only force capable of matching Fantômas's brilliant cruelty. In these pages, Juve hunts the unstoppable evil through Parisian boulevards and back rooms, through disguises and death traps, chasing a phantom who seems to be everywhere and nowhere. Each encounter reveals new depths of depravity, new schemes involving plague rats and filling chambers, new evidence that some monsters cannot be reasoned with or captured only caught. The Exploits of Juve introduced one of fiction's most terrifying villains, a figure so evil he makes Sherlock Holmes seem optimistic. These pulp thrillers invented the modern crime novel and influenced everyone from James Bond to Hannibal Lecter. If you like your villains irredeemable and your heroes relentless, this is where it began.